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House energy panel to dedicate first hearing to climate change

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold its first hearing under the chamber’s new Democratic majority on climate change.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who became the panel’s chairman Thursday when the new Democratic-majority House was sworn in, said climate will come before other major issues within Energy and Commerce’s broad jurisdiction, including health care and technology.

Pallone said he is dedicating the first hearing to climate is meant in part to highlight how Democrats believe Republicans ignored the issue during their eight years in the majority.

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“Part of the reason why we want to deal with climate change first is because of the necessity, because of what’s happening, the acceleration of global warming,” he told reporters.

“But it’s also the fact that we haven’t been able to have any hearings on that issue, because the Republicans wouldn’t allow it.”

Pallone said GOP leaders “were all climate deniers,” and that the party consistently blocked Democratic attempts to prioritize climate change in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The panel said in a statement that the hearing will focus on “assessing the environmental and economic impacts of climate change.”

Pallone said it’s unclear when the hearing will take place, but it will likely be about a week after the committee’s organizational meeting.

How to address the issue of climate change in the majority has divided the House Democratic caucus. Pallone has been an outspoken critic of creating a special select committee on climate change. Energy and Commerce is the main committee with jurisdiction over environment and climate policy, and a new select committee may step on that jurisdiction.

The new chairman said the next two hearings in his committee after the climate one will be on the impacts of a recent Texas federal court ruling that said the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, is unconstitutional, and on the Trump administration’s family separation policy for undocumented child immigrants.